Lunch on April 12, 2011 - The spa meets the playground

Today is another day where I am forced to prepare lunch ahead of time.  Tonight I am doing a photo shoot for Milkstars (I'm so excited about our new styles coming soon!) and I'll be home way too late to make anything tonight and am hoping to get as much sleep as possible tomorrow morning.

So, today's lunch is a mishmash of things in my refrigerator.  Last night we had friends over for dinner and served salmon and spanikopita (this time we didn't use frozen spinach but we did use the pre-washed bag kind - sorry farmer's market!).  It actually came out better than last time.  We also used a French feta instead of the Greek one we used last week.  We don't normally eat the same thing every week; we just thought it would be a fun dish to serve at a dinner party.  It's really not that difficult to put together and it's an unexpected dish to present to guests.

I cooked some brown rice today (the quick way, in the microwave), let it cool, and cut up some leftover salmon on top.  I have to remember to throw in an extra ice pack tomorrow to make sure the lunch stays really cold.  Lukewarm fish at the lunch table sounds pretty gross.

I didn't intend to make today's lunch look like something you'd find on the menu at a spa or yoga retreat; it just sort of happened that way.  Fingers crossed it passes the kid test.  If all else fails I know she will eat the rice.

We also served large (delicious!) artichokes from the farmer's market for dinner last night and I saved a few baby ones to cook today.  Mini artichokes are really easy to cook up.  In this case I pulled off all the leaves and just sent the hearts to school.  I thought it would be too difficult and time consuming to expect Juju to rip off all the leaves herself.  Plus, when she eats artichokes at home, she insists on dipping each leaf in lots of butter and I would be nervous to send a container of clarified butter to school lest Juju be called out for bringing contraband on the premises.

Finally, I included some grapes and cantaloupe and a clementine.  Cute clementine accessory courtesy of the Tokyo Japanese Outlet I've mentioned in earlier posts.  I was downtown on Thursday and happened to find a parking spot in front of the Japanese Village Plaza.  I took it as a sign that I needed more cute lunch accessories (a treat for Juju and now readers of this blog too) and went in for a few things I didn't pick up last time.